


Months and Years.

by imzadinot



Series: How Time Passes... [2]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Happy Ending, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I have no idea what I'm doing, M/M, Mentions Of Infidelity, Mentions of slight Alcohol Abuse, Past Relationship(s), There's a lot of swearing, copious use of the word fuck, larry - Freeform, mentions of EastEnders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2016-09-24
Packaged: 2018-08-17 03:27:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8128654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imzadinot/pseuds/imzadinot
Summary: It might have taken twenty-seven minutes for Louis’ life to fall apart but it takes a hell of a lot longer for it to be put back together.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So...this is the second part to Twenty-Seven Minutes that was requested by a couple of people - @larry_stylinsonaimh66 and @K, (I have no idea how to tag or anything, so please bear with me) - and it's the happy ending I have been writing and planning for a while. I would love to see what you guys think...if you can, leave me a comment?

**Month One**

Louis didn’t remember the exact words he said that evening, the first evening of many he’d spend curled up on the sofa by himself. He knew he’d said a handful of choice phrases, all intended to hurt Harry, embarrass the person Harry had brought home with him, the person Harry had chosen to ruin everything they’d had with. He knew he’d said things, awful things, at the time, but he couldn't quite be sure what he said. He was probably hysterical, shouting at Harry and swearing, saying things he should regret but, frankly, staring at the remains of the tie that was draped over the end of the sofa, he didn’t give a shit.

He remembered what he’d said later, when Harry had dared to call him, his voice seemingly full of regret and sounding like he’d just woken up, fresh from a night hopefully spent tossing and turning on one of their friends sofa’s, when he felt more rational and less prone to setting things on fire and smashing and breaking things, remembered telling Harry to fuck off and asking him all the questions you’re supposed to ask when the person who you love decide to rip your heart out of your chest and stamp all over it. Louis had asked why and who and how the fuck had he ever thought that Harry loved him as ‘you don’t do that. Not to someone you claim to love.’

He didn’t care that it wasn’t something Harry had meant to happen, he didn’t care that it wasn’t anyone he knew, just ‘some random guy from work’, he didn’t even care that Harry apologised, kept apologising, kept saying that he was ‘so fucking sorry, Lou, so fucking sorry’ and that he did love him, he did, he didn’t care because the answers didn’t make any of it better.

It didn’t make the fact that Harry, his Harry, who was the best boyfriend Louis had ever had, until he wasn’t, had done what Louis had thought he would never do. It didn’t make any of that better, so Louis tried to actively not remember any of it.

Vodka helped with that. Or at least that’s what Louis told himself. Sleeping helped, too. He’d eventually fall asleep and, for those first few minutes until he woke up properly, he’d wake up able to pretend that everything was okay, that the sheets still smelled like Harry and that he’d open his eyes to see those ever-familiar green eyes staring right back at him. He’d remember, though, and then it would be like being hit in the gut as he realised that his life had been painfully devoid of everything Harry had brought into it because Harry wasn’t a part of it anymore.

That realisation would be crushing but, twenty-seven days post-Harry, he was coping. He was. Okay, so he'd stopped going out, stopped answering his phone for anyone other than his mother and was living on a particularly depressing array of ready meals, but he was coping. He could almost smile when someone made a joke, he'd stopped wanting to kill himself when he was forced to see his friends, mostly when they tracked him down whilst he was at work or buying another shitload of ready meals for his freezer, all of whom were couples living happily and were blissfully unaware of just how quickly your relationship can go to shit.

Those, of course, were the good days. There were days when he felt like calling Harry and saying something stupid, days when he wanted everything to just stop, and days when he wished he could go back and live in ignorance. Ignorance really was bliss and, at his lowest, he’d want to go back to that evening and work later or take longer at Tesco or even call Harry and announce that he would be back soon so that he’d get home and he’d never have to know that Harry had fucked one of the office juniors when he thought Louis wouldn’t find out.

The first month was a mixture of good days and quite a few bad days. It made him physically nauseous to just get out of bed some days and, on others, the first thing he’d want to do would be to strangle Harry. Sadly, though, he’d come to the realisation that ending Harry Styles would only make him more miserable. Not only did he not look good in prison orange, he was certain that killing Harry wouldn’t make it any better because he was still completely and utterly in love with him.

Then, though, there were days when he thought that maybe, just maybe, dismemberment might be the way to go.

  
**Month Two**

By now, forty-five days post-Harry, Louis knew that, logically, he should be past it by now. The anger should have gone and he should have gotten rid of all of Harry’s stuff, the things Harry hadn’t sent friends round to collect, or Louis hadn’t trashed, he knew that he should be well on the way to being ‘over it’, but, instead, he was still angry.

Maybe not the I-want-to-kill-him-the-fucking-bastard anger he’d spent the last however many days feeling, but the kind of anger that comes from losing everything you’d planned to share with someone. Whilst he and Harry maybe hadn’t ever said anything, maybe things weren’t concrete, but there had been plans, plans for a future between them. They’d never asked, there were no rings, no drunken declarations of love and nervous questions, but they were going to get married, Louis had known it, and Harry had claimed to know it too. Then there was the ominously empty spare bedroom in the flat they’d chosen together, labelled as a spare bedroom but not filled with all of the crap you normally dumped in there. Instead, the walls had been painted a pale sunshine yellow, the dresser painted white, painted the same shade as the crib Harry’s mother still kept in her house, and the rocking chair given to them by friends who no longer had the space, a whole room that had been decorated as a sign of the future commitments to come.

Maybe they’d never made any of it official, there had been no big announcements to family and friends, but there had been a future there, one that Louis was no longer going to get.

His future seemed to have a lot more nights spent by himself with ready meals and cheap alcohol and shitty TV, at least until he could lie convincingly enough to tell himself that he wasn’t in love with Harry. Then, Louis supposed, his evening would spent as they had been pre-Harry, in pubs and bars with people he didn’t know and didn’t really want to get to know, hoping that whoever it was that he’d gone home with the night before lived near enough to the metro that he could still get to work before his boss noticed his absence.

For now, though, he spent his evenings far too invested in EastEnders, eating shit food and drinking even shittier wine, ignoring his phone as it buzzed with the latest calls from his mother, invites from work colleagues to go out, calls from friends who were perfectly happy spending their evening doing the usual couple things that Louis used to take for granted, all asking if he was still alive, as well as the usual texts from Harry. The texts were a daily thing, starting the minute Harry woke up and always saying the same things.

I’m sorry.

How are you?

Can we talk?

I really fucking miss you.

And, the one text that always made Louis’ resolve weaken, I love you.

But the thing was, Louis wasn't sure if he could believe him. If he could believe Harry. Believing Harry had come so easily before, he'd never had to doubt him, where he'd been or what he said. It didn't sit right with him but he couldn't bring himself to overcome it.

He didn't believe Harry so he didn't reply, leaving the texts unanswered and, eventually, unread. That wasn't to say he didn't want to reply, though. It went against everything his mother had drilled into him, about self-respect and how he deserved to be treated, but he wanted to reply. He wanted to reply and let Harry back into his life and maybe even trust him again, but he couldn't. He shouldn't.

But he wanted to. He really, really wanted to and most of the second month post-Harry was spent fighting the urge to pick up the phone whenever Harry texted.

  
**Month Three**

Louis almost felt okay again. He'd stopped wanting to punch Harry in the face whenever he thought about him, most of Harry's stuff had been put away out of sight, the remaining few items, anyway, and the prospect of going out and seeing other people didn't make him feel as nauseous as it had a month ago.

Okay, so, all of that was complete and utter bullshit, but if Louis didn't think about it too much, he could almost believe it. Or at least that's what he told himself when he dared to venture out to a bar he'd frequented in the days pre-Harry, ordering himself a beer and trying not look as nervous as he felt as a guy the other side of the bar shot a grin his way and moved closer to where Louis was sat. His drink didn't last long and when the same guy bought him another, Louis was almost buzzed enough to smile back and thank him.

He chose the next day not to think about how the guy had had short brown curls and forest green eyes, and tried to seem excited about the prospect of seeing him again, working very, very hard to put a smile on his face when they met for coffee. He was nice, really, and he didn't seem to put off by the fact that Louis had spent two and a bit months hiding away from people. There was just one little problem. Not even little, more kind of a minute problem.

He wasn't Harry.

So it was more of a massive problem. A problem so fucking massive that Louis only spent a few days trying to ignore it before he reached the point of fuck it and broke things, if you could even call four and a half dates a thing, off with Cole. Leaving him back on his sofa with a microwave curry and a can of beer watching as Phil Mitchell started an illicit affair with one of the new residents on the square. EastEnders, shit food, shittier alcohol, and he was back to where he was a week after Harry had torn his world apart.

It was the post Cole slump, where he stopped giving a shit and just admitted to himself that it was still Harry and would probably always be Harry, that he broke his mother's number one rule when it came to relationships, or at least ended relationships, and read Harry's texts before sending a few of his own. It wasn't particularly eloquent but it was how he felt.

You bastard.

I...I might miss you.

You're still a bastard, though.

Then he turned his phone off and opened the bottle of vodka he kept in the freezer, waking up an indeterminable number of hours later with a dry mouth and killer headache. He didn't dare look at his phone, leaving it where he'd dropped it under the sofa at some point in the night until he'd showered and was settled on the sofa with a mug of coffee and an aspirin. There was the usual phone call from his mother that he'd missed and a string of texts from Harry.

Lou...

I am, I know.

I miss you too.

I know.

You...you have to know how sorry I am. 'Cause I am. I'm so sorry. So fucking sorry.

Are you still there?

Call me?

Please?

When you're sober and awake...please call?

You never answer when I call....

Lou...

I love you.

Louis wanted to throw his phone at the wall. He wanted to throw something and see it smash into pieces. Throwing and smashing seemed like a pretty good way to let out some of what he was feeling at that moment. He couldn’t afford to replace or repair anything he broke, though, so instead of hurling his phone at the wall, he threw a pillow, then another and another, until all of his sofa cushions were at the other side of the room and he had to get up to be able to throw another. He only stopped then because it wasn’t nearly as satisfying or cathartic as he’d been hoping.

He dropped onto the floor amid the pile of cushions, hiding his face in the stupid fluffy fur cushion Harry had chosen and not moving for over an hour as he tried to work out what the fuck he was supposed to do next. He came up with nothing, and, having run out of alcohol, he did what anyone else would have done; he called his mother.

He spent the first five minutes struggling to explain to her what had happened, and the second five minutes listening to her sigh, partly out of exasperation, partly out of frustration at her inability to be there in person. The next ten minutes passed with her asking what he wanted to do. “I don’t know, mum. It’s Harry. I think…it’ll always be him. I love him mum…but, but…ugh. How did you do this?”

“Oh, love. I did it because I had to. I had you, the best little boy in the whole world, and you needed me. And because, ultimately, it was for the best. It was a sign, you know, finding out, that maybe we would never have worked out. But…but it doesn’t have to be like that for you. You love him, Boo, and sometimes…if it's what you really want, and you know that he’s sorry…oh, love. I don’t know, Lou. I could come up, for the weekend. Bring the girls, or leave them all with Dan.”

Just the thought of his mother coming had Louis nearly in tears, but he shook his head before he remembered that she couldn’t see him. “No. No, it’s okay. I’m okay, or I will be. Don’t. I’ll figure it out.”

They end up talking for another few minutes, his mother briefly trying to change his mind before asking him back home for the weekend, filling him in on the changes in the girl’s lives and how good at football Ernest was becoming, both of them hesitating for a moment before saying goodbye, leaving Louis feeling even more unsure as to what the fuck he was supposed to do next.

He ended up ignoring Harry and his texts for a few days, using the time to figure out if he could do it again, could trust Harry and could let them go back to being who they once were, taking the time out to see what happened next in the love life of Phil Mitchell and if Ben would ever get over Paul’s death, falling back into what was rapidly becoming routine life for him, three, nearly four months post-Harry.

  
**Month Four**

This was a bad idea.

A least, that what Louis kept telling himself as he waited in the middle of a field in the middle of nowhere. It had been his idea, admittedly, to meet in a field somewhere near Buxton, but now that he stood there, waiting for Harry, he felt kind of stupid. Stupid and slightly freezing.

Ninety-seven days post-Harry, and he was finally doing what maybe they should have done in the first place. Talk.

The reason that they were stood in the middle in the middle of a field in the middle of nowhere was because Louis had no desire to have this discussion somewhere he might have to be ever again. Or, as he’d put it to Harry, “I don’t want to have the memory of somewhere I like being ruined by you and the reason you decided to fuck some random twat from your office. Also, if I kill you, I want there to be as few witnesses as possible.”

So now he was stood in a field, shivering in the thin hoody he’d thrown on as he waited for Harry to make it up the hill. Louis had been early, and the extra time awarded him a moment to figure out what he wanted to say. Everything he’d had planned out was forgotten the second he saw Harry, trudging up the hill and looking slightly worse than Louis remembered. Four months of sleeping on friends sofas or sleeping in shitty hotels and bedsits had taken it’s toll, and there were dark circles under his eyes. His hair was longer too, like he hadn’t bothered to get it cut. He didn’t quite look like Louis’ Harry, or the Harry Louis hadn’t wanted to know. He looked like someone Louis ought to feel sorry for, and he would have, had the reason Harry looked like shit not been the reason they were standing in a fucking field after months apart.

Louis was the first one to speak, taking a second to give Harry a once over before he let out all of the things he’d wanted to yell at him for months. “Bastard. Absolute wanker. Fucking bastard. I should punch you. I would absolutely be in my right to punch you. Wanker. I hate you.”

“I love you.” Harry seemed so relieved to simply see him that he didn’t care what Louis said, knowing that he deserved it and so much more, waiting until Louis had gotten some more of it out of his system before he repeated himself. “I love you. I don’t care if you hate me, I fucking love you.”

“I don’t hate you. Or at least, I don’t think I do. The jury’s still out on that one.” Louis gave Harry a grudging smile, dropping down so that he was sat on the grass and waiting until Harry was sat as well to ask, “Why? You’ve already told me why, but I want you to tell me again. Why the fuck did you go and do something like that?”

It took Harry a moment to reply, staring down at the grass before he repeated the words he’d said to Louis months ago. “Honestly…I don’t have a reason. I know, I know. I threw away what you and I had, the best thing I have ever had, for no good reason. I just know that I regret it. I regret everything; sleeping with him, losing you, everything. God, I wish I hadn’t. It was…it was an impulse, a reckless decision because he’d been hitting on me for weeks and we left work early, went to the pub and…it just happened. I…am so sorry, so, so sorry. You didn’t deserve any of this. You..you deserve someone so much better, Lou.”

Louis simply nodded, pulling on the sleeve of his hoody and thinking for a second before he looked up at Harry. “You’re right. I do. I deserve better than the likes of you, Harry Styles. But that’s where I am a so fucking screwed. I don’t want better. I want you. I have tried, for fuck’s sake, I have tried to not want you, but it’s still you. I am still pissed, pissed beyond belief, and I wouldn’t trust you as far as I could throw you, but it’s you. I hate you, or at least I want to. But I can’t.”

“Lou…” It was all Harry could do to nod and try not to look like he was hoping for too much, biting his lip and looking over at Louis with an anxious look as he continued to speak. “So, Harry, if- If you want to, and you don’t have a thing going with…with him, we…we could work something out. God knows how, but- We could start over. From the very beginning. Rebuild everything. Work things out.”

Harry nodded again, clearing his throat before he said, “There’s no…no thing between me and him. I- I’d love that. You’re what I want, Lou. And I’ve been a twat, but it’s you. For me, it’s always you. If you’ll have me…I’d love for us to- To start over.”

And they sat there for a while longer before walking back down the hill, heading to their separate cars, Louis’ the beat up old VW Beatle belonging to Dan, Harry’s being Niall’s old Ford Focus, both clearly borrowed for the occasion, regardless of the slight grey area of the law, the awkward goodbye they shared lasting too long but not long enough and leaving them both wanting more.

  
**Month Six**

It took a while but Louis eventually stopped wanting to strangle Harry every time he saw him. Actually, that was a bit of an exaggeration. After the meeting in the middle of nowhere, all homicidal tendencies towards Harry were gone, or at least faded to the extent that he could pretend that they were none existent. In the almost two months since then, he and Harry had gone out a handful of times, dating each other like they were young again and the past four-ish months had never happened.

It was taking a while, but Harry’s stuff was slowly reappearing in the flat, having either been brought back by him, produced from wherever Louis had shoved it, or replaced, if it was a part of the unfortunate selection of belongings that Louis had trashed. They spent a lot of time talking, Louis spent a lot of time shouting or crying and the first time Harry worked late, it took everything he had not to call him and keep calling, not to keep checking up on him. But Harry came home, tired but himself, and made an effort to show Louis the work he’d been doing, explaining it to him, without explicitly stating that he was providing evidence that he could be trusted or saying that Louis needed to see it.

They made it work, and, eventually, it began to feel more normal, the two of them having dinner together and curling up on the sofa together, doing all the things they used to do together. Louis’ mum visited and, apart from the icy glare she gave Harry when she first arrived, it felt like it was supposed to. Their friends invited them round for dinners and parties and trips to Sunday lunch at the pub, and they went, slowly falling back into old patterns, patterns that they’d both missed when they were apart.

  
**Month Eight**

“I love you.”

For the first time in a long time, Louis let the words leave his mouth and it would have been impossible to miss the smile that lit up Harry’s face. Eight months post-disaster, and it felt like things were finally going to be okay. Harry, his Harry, his wonderful boy, who surprised him at work for lunch and held his hand on the way home and picked his tie up from by the front door when Louis left them there, is his again, and, when he looked over at Harry, Louis can’t help but smile too, leaning forward to kiss him and grin as Harry pulled him closer.

“I love you too.”

  
**Months Twelve to Twenty-Four**

All of the plans they’d made for their future, plans made long ago by two people who could never have known about all of the shit they’d face, began to become a reality. Plans that had once been thrown aside, mourned and forgotten, become concrete, questions asked with shaky smiles and trembling hands and parties with family and friends that end in announcements.

The not-so-spare bedroom became filled, not with the shit you usually cram into spare rooms, but with onesies and nappies and toys and a changing table and the crib painted the same shade of white as the dresser, with soft toys bought for them by friends and family who couldn’t wait to meet the next member of the little Tomlinson-Styles family.

The pale sunshine yellow room becomes the nursery to the little ray of sunshine Louis can never quite believe was his. His and Harry’s child, their gorgeous little boy. He was the result of all of the good days and all of the bad days, days when Louis wanted to push Harry away but pull him so close, days when they didn’t have to talk about it, or reassure each other that things were okay, days when they laughed and smiled and planned for the future, planned for Oscar and his smile that was their whole world.

It might have taken twenty-seven minutes for Louis’ life to fall apart but it takes a hell of a lot longer for it to be put back together. It takes months and years and everything he and Harry have, but they put everything back together and they built something newer and better than there ever was before.


End file.
